This invention relates generally to utensils for cooking food by steaming, and relates particularly to such utensils of the smaller sizes appropriate to household and restaurant cooking.
Cooking food, especially vegetables, by steaming is often preferred to cooking by immersion in boiling water, since the food cooked by steaming may exhibit better appearance, flavor and color, and is often deemed to retain more of the natural vitamins and minerals. These advantages can be ascribed to the fact that the amount of water, condensed upon the food from the ambient steam, is very much less than the amount of water required for simply boiling the food by immersion, and hence extracts a smaller amount of coloring, flavoring or nutrient materials. I have observed that when food is cooked in a conventional steaming utensil of the present designs, it still loses some flavoring and nutrient materials, a fact observable by tasting or reducing the water in the bottom of the utensil.